This government is not transformative

When this government came to power, the buzz word used to describe it was ‘transformational’.

They were going to fix the housing crisis. They were going to fix mental health. They were going to have no one living on the street by May 2018. They were going to fix child poverty, the environment, the health sector, the education sector, introduce widespread tax reform, energise the regions, plant one billion trees and achieve a zero road toll… not to mention zero carbon dioxide.

Yes, they really did promise all that, and if they had achieved all of those things, or even any of those things, they could have been seen as transformational. They would have deserved it.

If anyone ever needed to understand the difference between screeching at the government from the other side of the house and actually achieving things themselves in government, it is the Coalition of Losers. I think they do understand this now, although hell will freeze over before any one of them will admit it.

The media is waking up to this though… or at least Mike Hosking is.

You can almost feel the angst emanating from Ganesh Nana.

Ganesh is a fairly well known economist of a left-leaning persuasion. He tells us the government has one last chance next week to throw the dice on meaningful reform, and time is running out for them to be a genuine reformist government.

Of course, what he means by genuinely reformist is open to interpretation. But Nana is claiming the economic slowdown we are experiencing will be used as an excuse not to carry out the agenda he is so excited about.

Oh yes. I forgot to mention the Wellbeing Budget, where talking to a neighbour has more value than a trip to the doctor… although what either of those things has to do with the annual budget, no one knows.

I don’t think he was watching Australia on Saturday night. Reformist governments don’t last. Reformist oppositions don’t win elections.


This government, through the workings of the centrist element of the Labour Party and the common sense approach of New Zealand First, might well turn out to be a fairly middle of the road government.


Jacinda Ardern came up with lots of phrases and buzzwords that would lead you to believe change, reform and upheaval was coming.
But one of a couple of things has happened.

Either she’s was making it up and she’s panicked, or they’ve collectively panicked because much of what they set out to do isn’t, hasn’t and won’t work, and they’ve gone into their shell and closed down the mad end of the spectrum.

NZ First stopped the tax reforms, which were going to be very unpopular. Kiwibuild is a complete failure and most of the rest of it is going nowhere. I am not certain that they have ‘closed down the mad end of the spectrum’ but I think they have found it too easy to make promises and too hard to keep them.

The Nanas don’t get it. He wants something most New Zealanders don’t. It’s the same way Elizabeth Warren doesn’t get it, Bill Shorten didn’t get it, and Jeremy Corbyn doesn’t get it. The madness of the left and the noise that gets so many headlines around the world is not real.

Most of us already pay a lot of tax. Shorten’s proposals in Australia would have seen shareholders of public companies paying much more tax on dividends. Many people didn’t fully understand it but this would have done immeasurable damage to the ASX. Why exactly would anyone want that?

Why would anyone be mad enough to propose this as a policy that people would vote for?

Politicians on the left believe their own rhetoric and expect everyone else to do the same. Trouble is, many people don’t. All they can see with leftist proposals is that it will cost them more of their hard earned money. Most left leaning politicians, caught up in their own self congratulatory bubble, fail to see that.

Our government may be seeing that though. Maybe Winston is forcing them to see it. Nevertheless, most of their crazy proposals seem to have been discarded.

Not quite all of them though.

They’ve crossed the line already with Kiwibuild, Taranaki and its oil, and the Zero Carbon Bill.


I think Ardern might just be a retail politician. I think she might like power more than she likes changing the world.
I think she might have her eye more on re-election, than some sort of sop to the left-leaners who think she’s transformative in a way that would be politically suicidal.
I think, ultimately, Ganesh Nana might just end up disappointed.

A newspaper.

Good one, Mike. Let’s hope you are right.